1

La France en Chantant: The Rhetorical Construction of French Identity

in Songs of the Resistance Movement

Abstract: During the German Occupation from 1940-1944, members of the French Resistance sang folk songs to legitimize their movement in the face of widespread support for collaboration and brutal police attacks. Reprising a performative tradition of French political singing, Resistance fighters deployed national narratives and parody to define themselves as transhistorical French heroes while also practicing democratic forms they sought to safeguard. In this way, the songs represented resisters as the guardians of true “Frenchness,” an identity that excluded collaborators from the national community and robbed them of political legitimacy.

On November 11, 1940, more than 3,000 Parisian high school and college students

gathered around the Arc de Triomphe to stage the first public protest of the German Occupation

of France.1 At 8:30 a.m., they began marching down the Champs Elysées, where five months

earlier the Germans had paraded in triumph, yelling subversively “Long live de Gaulle!,”

“Long live France!”2 Reflecting the patriotic character of the protest, some young people wore

tricolor rosettes on the lapels of their jackets and nearly all sang La Marseillaise, the French

national anthem, which had recently been banned by the Nazis.3 In the early evening, German

soldiers arrested the protesters and transported them to Paris police headquarters for sentencing.4

Upon being questioned by police, high school student Robert Monnerary told the authorities that

he did not know why he had been arrested because he “didn’t sing or shout.” Similarly, René

Chuzeville told the police that he was simply walking through the streets with friends from his

school and had not “sung La Marseillaise” or “protested in any way.”5 That the arrested students

consistently denied engaging in the ephemeral act of singing the French national anthem, that the

protesters joined in singing the anthem as an act of resistance, and that Nazis had outlawed the

2

song in the first place together betray the multitudinous ways in which the performance of La

Marseillaise exerted rhetorical power in Occupied France.

Despite the country’s swift defeat and the harsh terms of the armistice, the students

mobilized the principal musical representation of national strength and determination in order to

give voice to their hopes of a free France. Originally written as a rallying cry for French

Revolutionaries, La Marseillaise evoked the memory of the struggle that had come to define

France’s national character and called citizens to honor the legacy of her fallen patriots. Indeed,

as they sang, the students likened the German occupiers to those eighteenth-century Prussian

“tyrants” who would dictate France’s future and imagined themselves as the faithful partisans

who would eventually carry the nation to “triumph and glory.” In this way, the French national

anthem served as a powerful and widely-used cultural tool in the psychological fight against

German Occupation, yet it was just one of the hundreds of songs sung and circulated by

members of the French Resistance during the country’s années noirs (dark years). Whistled over

the clanking of tools while sabotaging trains, sung in secrecy while hiding in caves, hummed to

fight despair while interred in German prison camps, French folk songs sustained Resistance

fighters throughout their struggle against the Nazis and their collaborators.

Folk songs, I shall demonstrate, served as a key form of cultural resistance that

ideologized, inspired, and emboldened resistance fighters in France’s war against Hitler. As

resisters sang, they reprised a performative tradition of French political singing begun during the

French Revolution. By extending this performative tradition of political singing, resisters

asserted themselves as protagonists in national history while literally practicing the democratic

forms they sought to safeguard. The discursive features of the songs strengthened resisters’

claims to national identity. Deploying traditional national narratives and parody, Resistance

3

songs, I maintain, defined the individuals who opposed German Occupation as members of a

transhistorical community of French heroes. In this way, the songs sought to represent resisters

as the guardians of true “Frenchness,” an identity that excluded the Vichy regime from the

national community and robbed it of its political legitimacy. Under the threat of fascism and the

material constraints of war, the performance of Resistance songs allowed partisans a means to

assert political power and maintain influence in the public sphere when other forms of

communication were unavailable.

These conclusions are based on an analysis of 137 folk songs, most of which circulated

throughout France from 1940-1944 through the act of singing. Because being caught with

subversive printed materials could lead to execution, resisters rarely committed songs to paper,

creating a challenge for the researcher intent on finding primary sources.8 Despite the ephemeral

nature of Resistance singing during the war, my archival efforts in the Bibliothèque Nationale

and the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent have uncovered the lyrics and melodies of thirty

songs sung by Resistance fighters from 1940-1944, including an unpublished collection

compiled by Jean Maurin, a Resistance fighter in the Val d’Allier region.9 These newfound texts

significantly expand the efforts of French historians who have compiled Resistance songs in two

anthologies, La Résistance en Chantant and Paroles et Musique: Les Chansons et la Deuxième

Guerre Mondiale.10 The texts that I have recovered and those available in the anthologies

circulated through a variety of media and in multiple contexts. Some songs gained national

popularity while others remained regional, their circulation documented in personal memoirs.11

Some were heard over the radio while others were composed and distributed orally between

factions of the Resistance. By examining both the songs written by members of the Resistance

4

and those broadcast over the BBC, my study draws upon the songs that circulated regionally as

well as nationally.

Analysis of Resistance singing in France from 1940-1944 yields insights into the cultural

rhetoric of WWII and contributes to the discipline’s ongoing efforts to resist the “textocentrism”

that has dominated our work.12 Scholars of the rhetoric of music have long stressed the

importance of studying musical patterns, demonstrating the constitutive dimensions of melody,

harmony, rhythm, and orchestration.13 Recently, rhetorical critics of spoken discourse have also

challenged the visual approach to rhetorical criticism, emphasizing the persuasive potential of

the aural. For example, in his analysis of the voices of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, Joshua

Gunn calls the discipline to restore its focus “on something singularly human: voice.”14 Greg

Goodale also laments the privileged position of visual texts in the field, arguing that we must

develop the skill to understand how “a pause, an intonation, or even a noise can make a forceful

argument.”15 My study answers this charge by considering the complex interplay between sound,

embodied performance, and discursive speech acts. Indeed, because singing involves both the

vocalization of melodies and the utterance of words, studying Resistance singing allows us to

undertake what Dwight Conquergood has called “the challenge of braiding together disparate

and stratified ways of knowing.”16 By combining an analysis of the act of singing with an

explication of the songs’ textual and musical appeals, this article attends to the various

dimensions of Resistance singing and resists the textocentrism that has often, if unintentionally,

limited the scope of our analyses and subjugated the vernacular communication of marginalized

groups to the textual discourse of institutional, dominant groups.17

This article treats seriously the voices of Resistance singers, showing the ways in which

the act of singing constructed them as guardians of a traditional French republicanism at a time

5

when national identity was in flux. To do so, I will first situate the songs in the historical context

of WWII France, establishing that the popularity of the Vichy government created the need for a

legitimizing discourse that would challenge the dominant perception of resisters as either out-of

touch eccentrics or dangerous outlaws. In the second section, I will theorize the performance of

Resistance songs, showing how resisters appropriated a historical mode of political singing

begun during the French Revolution to construct themselves as republican patriots. The third

section analyzes the performance of Resistance singing, focusing on the discursive and musical

deployment of national narratives that connect resisters to an idealized, historical French

community. Working in tandem with parodies of Vichy’s official anthem, these narratives, I

maintain, defined members of the Resistance as the guardians of traditional French values and

descendents of France’s heroes while excluding Vichy from the nation and subverting the

government’s claim to political authority.

Fallen France: Vichy, the Resistance, and Public Opinion On June 17, 1940, just one month after the German army broke through the Maginot line

to capture the north of France, World War I hero Philippe Pétain announced that he had agreed to

head France’s new government, headquartered in the spa town of Vichy, and was asking the

Germans for an armistice.18 Arguing that sustained fighting would prove militarily and politically

dangerous, the general urged the French to lay down their arms and accept the nation’s

misfortune. Pétain insisted that an armistice would protect the possibility of maintaining an

independent French government and guarantee France an honorable, though subordinate, place

in Hitler’s New Europe. The suffering France would endure under the Germans would be brief,

he claimed, and would provide the opportunity for national rebirth. To this end, he launched the

National Revolution, an ideological campaign aimed at eradicating liberal individualism, the

6

guiding political philosophy in France since the French Revolution. Instead of honoring the

traditional principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, Pétain held that the nation needed a

return to the organic communities of family, workplace, and region.19

Offering himself up “as a gift to attenuate the country’s deep misfortune,” Pétain was met

with wild public approval.20 Across France, people lifted him above the stature of modern-day

king, laying gifts of local soil at his feet, raising his portrait behind church altars, and comparing

him to the country’s original savior, Joan of Arc.21 While Pétain’s National Revolution failed to

resonate strongly with many French people for whom France’s legacy of republicanism was

central to their vision of the nation, the Vichy regime installed itself quite easily due to the

unpopularity of the previous government, known as the Third Republic. The shock and pain of

defeat turned the Republic into a handy scapegoat and allowed Pétain to settle into his role as

redemptive savior.22 Seeking to ease the transition to an entirely new political ideology, Pétain’s

supporters capitalized off of his image as France’s truest patriot, grounding the legitimacy of his

political authority in his “Frenchness.” One propaganda poster, for example, featured a portrait

of a stately Pétain, below which the caption asked, “Are you more French than him?” As the

embodiment of a perfected national identity, the poster proclaimed, Pétain had an unquestionable

right to overhaul France’s longstanding republican tradition.23

As a result of Pétain’s popularity, few people actively resisted Vichy’s collaboration with

Germany during the first two years of the Occupation.24 Even those who disagreed with the

decision to sign the armistice were unlikely to oppose Vichy and Germany due to their

confidence in Pétain, uncertainty about the war’s outcome, and fear of German retaliation. In

1942, French essayist Jean Guéhenno documented the anxiety that paralyzed many, calling

France a country that was “nothing but a frightened protoplasm.”25 Thus, the first acts of

7

resistance were initiated by small, disconnected groups of like-minded friends and family, most

of whom knew nothing of each other’s existence or of Charles de Gaulle’s efforts to coordinate

an organized Resistance in London. Slowly, these localized groups of resisters formed larger

groups that eventually became the well-known movements and networks of the French

Resistance. When Vichy imposed forced labor on French youth in 1942, young deserters formed

another, more militant unit called the “maquis,” the French word for “a group of dense shrubs or

bush.” These youth hid in the countryside and resisted the occupation through acts of sabotage

and violence.26

Despite Pétain’s popularity, the events of 1942-1943 caused public support to shift

against Vichy’s policy of collaboration. As hundreds of thousands of French men and women

were rounded up for tours of forced labor in Germany, increasing food shortages left entire

regions without bread and meat, and German soldiers pushed past the demarcation line to occupy

the free zone, Vichy’s policy of collaboration began to lose its appeal. Now under the full brunt

of German Occupation, French citizens grew hostile to Vichy’s policies. The entrance of the

United States into the war at the end of 1941 and mounting Allied victories, both of which began

to forecast the defeat of Germany, strengthened this opposition and made public opinion more

sympathetic to Resistance efforts.27

Yet, even this change in popular opinion did not make joining the Resistance a popular

choice. Just when the public became suspicious of Vichy’s policies, the government increased its

efforts to stamp out partisan activities, setting action against the Resistance as the new gauge of

collaboration with the Reich. Indeed, by 1942, Vichy had deported so many of France’s Jews and

foreigners that the government no longer had sufficient leverage at Germany’s bargaining table.

Faced with the threat of losing authority in the unoccupied zone, Vichy targeted the Resistance,

8

offering police action against its members as evidence of cooperation with the Third Reich.28 As

a result, many resisters were arrested, tortured, and executed. Those who escaped could not

rejoin their units, as their colleagues feared that they would lead police to the group. In addition

to strengthening police action against the Resistance, Vichy launched a propaganda campaign

against the Resistance, conducted through the medium of the radio. Led by collaborationist

politician Philipe Henriot, Vichy’s radio broadcasts simultaneously characterized Resistance

fighters as naïve, misguided adolescents and dangerous bandits from whom the French needed

protection. One broadcast, for example, called the maquis “a bunch of bandits and thieves and

also, alas, some sincere young boys, abused by the fallacious propaganda from London.” These

misguided youngsters, the announcer predicted, “will soon realize the enormous material

superiority of Germany, and they will be condemned to stay in their camouflage in their forest, in

their cavern, and in their den, waiting for a landing that will never come.”29 Thus, Vichy’s

vicious police and propaganda attacks tempered the popularity of the Resistance. While some

citizens may have supported the cause of the Resistance, many were simply too afraid to join.

Others continued to trust Pétain’s portrayal of resisters as dangerous ideologues who were best

avoided.

Despite subsequent romanticizations of the French Resistance, those who participated

were the object of the public’s scorn and Vichy’s disdain. In the early years of the Occupation,

popular opinion rested overwhelmingly with Pétain. Trusting in their Christ-like figure to protect

them from the full force of German repression, the French focused their efforts on resuming life

as usual. Those who chose to resist often were ostracized from their communities and families

and characterized as maladjusted outsiders. Just as public opinion began to change in favor of the

Resistance, Resistance fighters found themselves the target of an aggressive French police hunt

9

and maligning propaganda campaign. In the face of these hardships, how was the Resistance to

establish any sort of political legitimacy? How were the emerging Resistance fighters to imagine

themselves as France’s rightful political leaders when public support favored the collaborationist

Pétain? How were they to craft a positive collective identity for themselves and the French

people in the face of Vichy’s slanderous propaganda? How were they to sustain morale in the

face of the torture and execution of their comrades? A crucial means employed by the French

Resistance to overcome these challenges was the singing of folk songs. Through the performance

of these songs, resisters recited and disseminated a legitimizing discourse that allowed them to

imagine themselves and to be imagined by their fellow citizens as the true arbiters of French

culture and values.

Resistance Singing: A Historically Situated Performance Practice

My understanding of Resistance singing is informed by theories that underscore

performance as a constitutive mode of action that is situated within certain models of historical

practice. Like John MacAloon, I see performances as opportunities in which people “reflect upon

and define [themselves], dramatize [their] collective myths and history, present [themselves]

with alternatives, and eventually change in some ways while remaining the same in others.” 30 In

order to fashion these new subjectivities, performers draw upon inventional resources made

available to them by historical discourses and modes of practice.31 Anthropologist Richard

Bauman explains the contextualized nature of performance events, noting that the form and

meaning of performance is “rooted in culturally defined scenes or events” that “constitute

meaningful contexts for action, interpretation, and evaluation.”32 While past performance events

do not determine the meaning of current events, they do “provide precedents and guidelines for

10

the range of alternatives possible.”33 It is the audience’s ability to recognize the connection

between past model and current action that gives performance its constitutive power. Indeed,

according to Marvin Carlson, all performance involves a “conscious of doubleness,” the moment

wherein the audience places the execution of a current performance “in mental comparison with

a potential, an ideal, or a remembered original model of that action.”34 As the observer, even if

that person is also the performer, draws the link between the current performance and the past

ideal, s/he validates the symbolic act and is interpellated into its ideology. Thus, understanding

the constitutive function of Resistance singing between 1940-1944 requires us to examine the

meanings attributed to the mode of French political singing in the years leading up to the nation’s

defeat.

French political singing emerged at the very beginning of the nation’s transition from

monarchy to republicanism, offering disenfranchised citizens an opportunity to participate in

civic life. According to historian Laura Mason, singing was one of the “most commonly used

means of communication” during the French Revolution.35 Easily transposed between oral and

print cultures, the songs allowed illiterate citizens to demonstrate that the political sphere was not

the possession of political elites, but a contested terrain over which many factions of the

population struggled.36 Revolutionary singing, therefore, was symbolic enactment of the

republican virtues the partisans espoused. After the Revolution, the French continued to look to

singing as a means of marking themselves as national subjects. According to historian Eugene

Weber, songs were an ideal medium for the formation of national identity. Indeed, it was through

a “war of songs” that rural citizens learned what it meant to be “French” and were assimilated

into the modern nation.37 While songs such as La Marseillaise encouraged the spread of the

11

national language, others were mobilized as part of a national education campaign designed to

teach “a sense of the fatherland, of civilization, and of moral ideals.”38

The legacy of French political singing was again called upon in WWI, the guerre totale

that marshaled the collective efforts of civilians and soldiers alike. Aided by the burgeoning

commercial music market, song culture became enormously important on the home front and in

the trenches. As people adapted songs to fulfill their individual requirements and purposes, they

drew upon pre-war cultural symbols that songs made available to them. According to historian

Regina Sweeney, these conventions lent symbolic meaning to songs, making a certain melody a

marker of patriotism, another a villainous act of treason. As soldiers and civilians tried to

negotiate their identities amidst a terrifying, alienating political climate, the songs became vital

to their relationship to the nation.39 Taken together, these practices of French singing from the

Revolution through WWI established the performance of songs as a means by which French

citizens could participate in democratic life and in the construction of French republicanism.

Indeed, by 1940, national singing was not a form of entertainment, but a radically democratic

performance practice that allowed individuals to simultaneously contribute to the meaning of

nationhood and derive their own unique interpretations of what Frenchness meant.

By appropriating this historical performance mode, Resistance singers practiced the very

republicanism they sought to embody. The act of patriotic, nonhierarchical singing violated the

Vichy regime’s emphasis on obedience and service and marked singers as republican citizens,

struggling to restore the tenets of liberal individualism. Whether or not they were aware of the

rhetorical function of their performances, evidence from the personal memoirs of Resistance

fighters demonstrates that they intended to safeguard republican traditions. For example, Alban

Vistel wrote that his decision to participate in the Resistance had been a “reaction of individual

12

honor” and “a victorious refusal of any historical determinism.”40 Many articulated their

adherence to natural rights in opposition to the anti-Semitism embraced by Vichy and Germany.

Like Jules-Geraud Saliège, the Archbishop of Toulouse, these resisters believed that people were

governed by “human morality which imposes duties and recognizes rights. These duties and

rights are derived from the nature of man . . . it is in the power of no mortal to suppress them.”41

Engaging the widely-held conception of France as an historic champion of human liberty, these

resisters combined patriotism with reverence for individualism. Resisters had a “common

patrimony” that bequeathed to them a “profound feeling for human dignity,” as the mayor of

Toulouse stated in 1944.42 Because political singing had developed in France as a decentralized

mode of action tied to the preservation of republican ideals, it offered resisters a perfect

inventional resource for the reclamation of a traditional national identity.

Fragmentary evidence of singing in the French Resistance gathered from police reports

and resisters’ testimonies attests to the capacity of singing to mark French people as

uncompromising opponents of collaboration. As the story of the protest on November 11, 1940,

reveals, the singing of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise constituted a diverse group of

high school and college students as unyielding French patriots who would never submit to

German rule. These reports and others repeatedly demonstrate that the act of singing allowed

police and citizens to identify resisters. A police report on August 17, 1941, documents the

attempted arrest of 150 young people who sang the national anthem at Paris’s Place du Chateau

Rouge.43 On August 20, 1941, authorities were alerted that four French people had been heard

singing the national anthem behind the backs of three German soldiers at Place d’Italie, one of

Paris’s largest squares. The accused singers ran off before an arrest could be made.44

13

Perhaps the most moving testament to the power of singing to mark citizens as guardians

of a republican France can be found in the records of singing in German prisons and

concentration camps. Roger Tabar, a prisoner of war from Paris, composed songs of resistance

for his fellow Frenchmen. Even within the prison walls, Tabar argued that resistance was

possible through singing. “All the prisoners weren’t admirers of Pétain,” he said, “nor were they

collaborators like many who lived in Paris.” Tabar’s songs allowed these prisoners to enact their

resistance, to “demoralize the Germans” and mark themselves as members of the Resistance.45

Tabar’s testimony is only one of many that emphasize the role of singing in linking prisoners to a

larger community of resisters. For example, two women who were prisoners at the Ravensbrück

concentration camp remember singing the Resistance anthem Le Chant des Partisans to “feel at

home even in the heart of Germany” and “to reinforce our solidarity, despite our political,

religious, and social differences.”46 Other prisoners sang Le Chant des Partisans song before

being killed. Maurice Druon, one of the song’s lyricists, recalls that a group of prisoners sang the

anthem before being executed by a firing squad.47 Composer Anna Marly remembers that two

prisoners sang it while they dug their own grave before being shot by the German guards.48 A

musical symbol of French resolve and revolutionary spirit, Le Chant des Partisans offered a final

means by which to defy German authority and express loyalty to France. Thus, while singing

held myriad meanings in these moments, one of its powers was to symbolically connect

prisoners to an idealized French nation in moments of profound despair and loneliness.

A form of rhetoric available to all classes of people, singing provided French citizens

with a participatory, profoundly democratic form of communication that mirrored their

republican values. However, if the performance of songs was to be an effective strategy for the

seizure of political authority, resisters needed additional means by which to claim national

14

identity for themselves and exclude Vichy from the nation’s fold. Thus, the discursive and

musical tropes discussed in the next section were vital to the rhetoric of Resistance singing as

they worked to construct resisters as ideal French citizens. The use of lyrics and music grounded

in the musical tradition of France transformed the radically de-centralized and democratic

practice of communal singing into a means of marking resisters as the only true French and

denying the Frenchness of Vichy. Ultimately, singing allowed resisters to negotiate two

seemingly conflicting goals: the inclusive act of embodying brotherly republicanism and the

exclusive act of rejecting those they considered foreign to the nation.

La France en Chantant: The Discursive and Musical Construction of “Frenchness”

In the winter of 1942, Russian composer Anna Marly wrote the music and Russian lyrics

to what would become the most famous anthem of the French Resistance, Le Chant des

Partisans. In the spring of 1943, the song was set to French text and chosen as the theme of the

BBC’s Honneur et Patrie, a program aimed at encouraging those in Occupied France to continue

the struggle against the Germans. To the first time listener or reader, the song functions most

obviously as a call to action, urging Resistance fighters to “come up from the mines” and “down

from the hills” in order to take up arms against the German occupiers. Embedded in this overt

call to action, however, is a national narrative, evoked through appeals to traditional French

values of liberté, égalité, et fraternité. By exploiting these tropes, the song calls forth the

memory of France’s past and connects Resistance fighters with the nation’s historical heroes and

patriots.

Like other Resistance songs, Le Chant des Partisans deploys a national narrative through

both lyrics and music. The constitutive power of narratives to communicate experiences of

national belonging has received considerable attention in the field of rhetoric. Scholars like

15

Michael McGee, Maurice Charland, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson have

underscored the ways in which stories about a nation’s history work to construct a sense of a

collective “people.”49 While these critics have focused on narratives deployed through discursive

means, others have illuminated music’s potential to tell national stories. For example, James

Irvine and Walter Kirkpatrick show that melodies and rhythms work by evoking listeners’

“experiential capacity,” or the collections of personal experiences that imbue a set of symbols

with meaning.50 Alberto Gonzalez and John Makay echo this argument, demonstrating that music

functions through a process of ascription whereby listeners assign meaning to certain musical

patterns and then recall those meanings each time the familiar music plays.51 Yet, music does not

merely call forth the history of the nation but also sounds the emotions that attend the

remembrance of the past. As Deanna and Timothy Sellnow eloquently write, “music sounds the

way feelings feel.”52 Thus, in order to see the ways in which singing constituted resisters as

traditionally French, we must probe the songs’ discursive and non-discursive elements for the

evocation of a traditional, idealized national narrative. By examining the tales of France’s

national heroes, appeals to its legacy of individual liberalism, and the sounding of its national

rhythms and melodies, we can see how invoking the memory of a perfected France works to

constitute resisters as the true sons and daughters of that nation.

In an effort to subvert the platform of Vichy’s National Revolution and identify

Resistance fighters as members of a collective subject that has long been dedicated to the

protection of traditional French ideals, Le Chant des Partisans exploits the trope of liberté

through an emphasis on individual rights. By identifying Resistance fighters as free agents who

control their own destinies, the song emphasizes each person’s agency. As the song proclaims, in

the maquis “each man knows/What he wants, what he’s doing.” This belief in the individual’s

16

control over his/her own choices marks a significant departure from Vichy’s emphasis on

communal living and evokes the Revolutionary doctrine of individual liberalism. By appealing

to liberalism’s main tenet—individual rights—the lyrics of Le Chant des Partisans serve to

ideologically connect Resistance fighters to French Revolutionaries. As the song continues,

appeals to individual liberty grow even more evident as the lyrics encourage illegal acts of

resistance in the struggle for freedom. For example, Resistance fighters may take up arms against

their enemies (“Remove from the straw/The rifles, machine gun/And grenades!”), or they may

disobey the law by freeing members of their movement from prison (“We are the ones who

break/The prison bars/For our brothers”).53 As these lyrics suggest, the fighters are encouraged to

battle tyranny through any means necessary; liberty demands and legitimizes any form of

resistance. The song ends with a final appeal as the last stanza characterizes Resistance fighters

as the champions of liberty, encouraging other members to “whistle . . . in the night,” so that

freedom may hear them. Here, a personified liberty draws close to the Resistance fighters in

order to guide and protect them throughout their struggle, just as she did with their Revolutionary

forbears.

Like Le Chant des Partisans, many songs of the Resistance call upon the trope of liberty

in order to link the resisters to a transhistorical national community and legitimize their vigilante

acts. Made in opposition to the Vichy government, which, in the words of one song “puts France

in the service of the Nazis” for “the pleasure of strangling the Republic,” the appeals ground

themselves in an allegiance to French Revolutionary republicanism.54 Whereas Vichy would

happily let the country limp along in servitude, the Resistance proclaims the pursuit of liberty to

be the guiding principle under which they fight:

17

Liberté! Cette grande espérance Qui brillait tout au fond de nos coeurs, Liberté! Pour nous et pour la France Nous ne voulions pas d’autre bonheur.55

Liberty! This great hope That has been shining deep in our hearts Liberty! For us and for France We wouldn’t want any other happiness.

Here, Resistance fighters claim to be driven by a singular desire to restore freedom in France, the

same hope that spurred the Republic’s very founding. By continuing their forbears’ struggle for

liberté, the singers align themselves with these historical heroes. Other songs make this

connection even more explicit by setting France’s Revolutionary soldiers as the guides to

freedom. As the song, Pas de Kollaboration, states, the example set by France’s ancestors will

lead them to reclaim the nation’s freedom:

Ne ne voulons pas vivre en esclavage De nos aïeux retrouvant la fierté Nous saurons défendre l’heritage Des droits et de la liberté!56

We don’t want to live in slavery From our ancestors, finding pride again, We know how to defend our heritage Our rights and our liberty!

Indeed, the appeal to liberty derives its rhetorical power from its status as a culturally salient

trope. Appeals to liberté carry particular connotations and associations, most obviously evoking

France’s unique and character-defining battle against the tyranny of King Louis XVI. By

exploiting this trope, the Resistance fighters identify themselves as the “defenders of liberty,” the

descendants of those who have fought for France’s freedom.57

Le Chant des Partisans also gives voice to the second Revolutionary ideal of equality by

emphasizing the equal status held by members of the Resistance. Because all “march . . . kill . . .

[and] die like dogs,” no member is valued above another—all are equal in rank and status. This

sentiment is echoed in the fourteenth stanza where the lyrics remind Resistance fighters that no

person is more integral to the fight for French independence than another. When one man dies,

another “emerges from the shadows/To take [his] place.” While these lyrics may seem callous in

18

their rejection of individual worth, they serve to emphasize the equality among Resistance

fighters. While status, wealth and success may matter in the external world, these things are

irrelevant to the fight against Germany. Indeed, many of the songs emphasize this equality

among Resistance fighters. One attests that the maquis is made up of “children of the common

people and of the bourgeoisie,”58 another asserts that the movement makes no distinction

between those who are “rich or without fortune.”59 Despite socioeconomic status, these “soldiers

of equality”60 “are all the sons of our France.”61

Not only are men equal in the eyes of the Resistance, but all are bound together in pursuit

of their goal. The unofficial Resistance hymn makes explicit appeals to brotherhood, or

fraternité, as the resisters sing of their attachment to one another. The lyrics address fellow

Resistance fighters repeatedly as “friend,” “brother,” “comrade,” and “companion.” These words

work to constitute the Resistance fighters as an intimate group. In reality, the Resistance was

made up of a variety of networks and movements that worked separately and secretly to

overthrow German forces. By addressing fellow Resistance fighters as “friends” and “brothers,”

however, resisters created a discursive means by which to overcome the diffuse nature of their

movement’s organization and conceive of themselves as members of a larger, more significant

community. Indeed, an overwhelming majority of the songs exploit the trope of brotherhood,

claiming that resisters are “united like brothers by the same noble ideal,”62 and “march together

for happiness and justice.”63 The songs portray a fierce devotion among members of the

Resistance, even pledging not to leave captured members behind: “We are the ones who

break/the prison bars/for our brothers.”64 By evoking the ideal of fraternity, the lyrics not only

constitute Resistance fighters as a group unto themselves, but implicate them in a broader

19

collective subject. The guardians of fraternité, they become a part of France’s Revolutionary

past.

The music of Le Chant des Partisans also functions to align Resistance fighters with their

republican forebears. The song opens with a militaristic cadence played on a single, snare drum.

Somber and fatalistic, the cadence calls to mind the image of soldiers resolutely marching toward

the battlefield in order to cast resisters as state-sanctioned warriors. The song maintains this

militaristic sound by deploying march-like rhythms reminiscent of La Marseillaise, the song that

became popular during the French Revolution and was later chosen as France’s national anthem.

Emphasizing beats one and three, the beats on which a soldier’s steps would fall, the song evokes

a strong sense of forward motion. To lend a sense of exigency to this momentum, Le Chant des

Partisans begins each musical phrase with a pick-up, or a beat before the downbeat of the

measure in which the phrase sounds. By beginning the phrase before the actual start of the

measure, the song evokes the same urgent call to action found in the opening lines of the national

anthem (See Figures 1 and 2). Appropriating march-like rhythmic devices from La Marseillaise,

the melody of Le Chant des Partisans enhances the song’s lyrical appeals to Revolutionary

values by grounding them in a musical representation of the Revolution. As they sing, Resistance

fighters identify themselves as soldiers in the same Revolutionary tradition, fighting to protect

France’s traditional values.

Yet, while Le Chant des Partisans seeks to align resisters with the soldiers of the French

Revolution, its sound makes a clear distinction between the romanticized and mythologized

overthrow of the monarchy and the unpopular, arduous work of the Resistance. Indeed, in timbre

and melody, the song sounds of somber determination and perseverance. For example, the

singer’s voice is rich and dark, much like the sound we would expect to come from the lips of the

20

muscular and fearless Marianne, the allegorical symbol of republican France. Singing in her

lower register, the soloist enunciates in a deliberate manner as if each word was a conscious and

defiant act of resistance. By deploying glottal stops and articulating the consonants in clear

precision, the singer establishes herself as a free agent, resolute in her decision to overthrow the

Nazis. As she sings, a chorus of men and women double her in unison, softly humming to

convey the solidarity and fraternity to which the lyrics appeal. Unlike La Marseillaise, this

melody is confined to a narrow range of pitches. Rather than soaring in idealistic expressions of

optimism and hope, it remains grounded to the tonic, as if painfully cognizant of the

consequences of defying the Nazis. Shortly, an accordion enters the musical fabric, playing

ascending melodic flourishes and sustained chords that call attention to its unique and

unmistakable sound. The traditional musical instrument of France, the accordion bestows a sense

of tradition and patriotism upon the resisters, reinforcing their status as the nation’s true patriots

and protectors. By sounding the feelings of patriotic determination and fatalistic acceptance, the

song constitutes resistance fighters as modern-day soldiers, bravely and stoically facing the

dangerous word of resisting the Germans despite the uncertainty of the war’s outcome.

While Le Chant des Partisans seeks to identify Resistance fighters as members of a

transhistorical national community through rhythmic appropriation and the evocation of feelings

of determination, other songs borrow entire Revolutionary melodies to make this connection. For

example, La Marseillaise du Maquis appropriates the melody of La Marseillaise for its lyrics:

Amis, voici la Résistance; Les vaillants soldats du maquis! Debout pour sauver notre France Forces française du pays! Ils descendent de nos montagnes Comme nos ancetres guerriers Et viennent en vrais chevaliers Protéger villes et campagnes.65

Friends, here is the Resistance Vallaint soldiers of the maquis! Ready to save our France The French forces of the nation! They come down from our mountains, Like our ancestral warriors, And come like true knights To protect our cities and towns.

Jakes 21

Here, again, the melody and lyrics work together to connect Resistance fighters to the “ancestral

warriors” of France’s past. Because the song takes the melody of La Marseillaise, the listener or

singer cannot help but associate the Resistance members with Revolutionary soldiers who sang

the hymn while storming the Bastille. Other Resistance songs also appropriate the melodies of

popular and historic national hymns. Among the most popular melodies chosen are those of Le

Chant du Départ, L’Internationale, La Carmagnole, Regiment de Sambre et Meuse, and Alsace-

Lorraine, all of which originated during the Revolution and were remobilized for France’s effort

in WWI.66 As symbols of national identity, these melodies provided Resistance members with a

powerful resource in the construction of their own collective identity as the only true French.

The act of singing reinforced these discursive and musical tropes, offering resisters a

means to enact their solidarity and resolve. Testimonies from former resistance fighters reveal

that singing was an everyday part of life, a communal act that helped them to feel close to one

another while giving voice to their shared ideals. For example, recounting his time in the French

Resistance more than forty years earlier, François Musard described one Saturday night on the

outskirts of Les Glières, a mountain town near the Swiss border. The men had finished their

suppers and were playing cards to pass the time. To combat boredom, their sergeant suggested a

singing tour where each man would perform a song of his choosing. “Almost all of the group

contributed,” Musard remembered. “Some sang well-known tunes, while others, whose voices

weren’t as good, spoke monologues or recited bits of poetry.” The men sang many different

songs, from military marches to love ballads, but the most memorable was one soldier’s original

composition, written on behalf of their unit. As Musard recalled, the song’s “first verses and

refrain stayed in the ears of our comrades for a long time.”67 Julien Helfgott, another member of

the maquis, also remembered the bonds forged through singing: “Stuck together, we dreamed,

22

brothers bound by the same oath, united by a common ideal that we expressed in our songs, our

words, and our laughter.”68 As both of these testimonies demonstrate, singing was a powerful

constitutive practice because it gathered resisters together to enact their ideals of brotherhood

and voice their commitment to the reestablishment of a republican France.

Yet, like all constitutive rhetoric, Resistance singing could only effectively construct

collective identity if it also excluded certain citizens from the resisters’ community of national

heroes. Indeed, as the songs aligned resisters with the republican warriors of the past, they also

attempted to dismantle the Vichy government’s political legitimacy by barring it from the

nation’s fold. Many of the songs accomplish this goal by combining national narratives with

appropriations of Vichy’s songs. Setting their own lyrics to Vichy’s melodies, the Resistance

parodies the government’s discourse and illustrates the hypocrisy of its claims to national

identity. English scholar Linda Hutcheon has theorized parody as imitation that points out

difference through critical distance and irony.69 Hutcheon rejects a definition of parody as

necessarily satirical, recovering its original meaning as a neutral form of ironic repetition that

“can be playful as well as belittling,” “critically constructive as well as destructive.”70 Through

an ironic appropriation of the form of the original text, parody allows rhetors to demonstrate

points of separation and contrast and invite alternative interpretations for consideration. As

Bakhtin writes, it shows that one meaning is “incapable of exhausting the subject” and “forces us

to experience those sides of the object that are not otherwise included in a given genre.”71 By

setting new lyrics to Vichy’s own melodies, Resistance parodies pointed to the discrepancy

between Vichy’s optimism and the harsh reality of life under the Occupation. The songs offered

resisters the opportunity to open Pétain’s discourse for collective reflection and to revise the

public’s understanding of the regime. The goal was to subvert Vichy’s own claim to national

23

identity, to portray the regime as corrupt and manipulative outsiders while representing

Resistance fighters as the true guardians of French values and culture.

In order to deny the Frenchness of Vichy, the Resistance chose for its songs one of the

most popular hymns to Vichy leader Marshal Philippe Pétain, Maréchal, Nous Voila. Written in

1941, the song lauds Philippe Pétain as France’s “savior” and pledges service in Vichy’s

National Revolution:

Une flamme sacré Monte du sol natal Et la France enivré Te salue Maréchal! Tous tes enfants qui t’aiment Et vénèrent tes ans A ton appel suprême Ont répondu: “Présent”

A sacred flame Comes up from native soil And an intoxicated France Comes back to life at its signal All your children who love you And venerate your years To your supreme call Responded: Present

Maréchal, nous voilà! Devant toi, le sauveur de la France Nous jurons, nous tes gars De server et de suivre tes pas Maréchal, nous voilà! Tu nous as redoné l’espérance. La patrie renaitra Maréchal, Maréchal, nous voilà!72

Marshal, here we are Before you, the savior of France We pledge, we, your guys To serve you and follow your steps Marshal, here we are You have given us back our hope The fatherland will be reborn Marshal, Marshal, here we are!

To accompany this optimistic pledge, the Vichy song employs a jubilant march, full of pick-ups

and dotted rhythms similar to those found in La Marseillaise (see Figure 3). Full orchestration,

including a regal brass section, lends additional pomp and confidence to the jaunty march.

Recorded by French singer André Dassary and the Ray Ventura Orchestra in 1941, the song

opens with an eight-measure trumpet fanfare that deploys the brass’ imperial tones in order to

call French citizens to attention as they “venerate” their authoritarian leader. The trumpet section

continues to blast triplet figures as the soloist sings, marking Dassary’s praise of Pétain with the

regal sound of a coronation ceremony. During each chorus, a men’s chorus echoes Dassary’s

24

operatic tenor, lending a sense of strength and virility to the song’s pledge to national service. At

the end of the recording, the men join Dassary in a final, climactic refrain. The men sing at full

volume, joining their voices to bestow a sense of tough manhood to the song’s call to service.

Leading the nation’s rebirth is not a slight task, the men’s voices suggest, but a struggle that

demands physical and mental fortitude. Through the combination of these strong, manly voices,

the imperial brass flourishes, and the march-like rhythms, the song characterizes Pétain as a

king-like leader whose majesty compels the eager obedience of a tough and muscular citizenry.

Vichy attempted to use this melody to ascribe a sense of military honor to the act of serving

Vichy and its National Revolution.

However, given the conditions of the armistice (whereby Vichy agreed to the reduction of

the French army to 100,000 men, the disarmament of the navy and air force, and the surrender of

all French weapons) and Vichy’s failure to shield French citizens from the horrors of the

Occupation, such a confident, glorious, regal march seems inappropriate for Vichy’s call to

service. Indeed, in light of the harsh living conditions for most French, Marshal Pétain hardly

qualified as the “savior of France.” The Resistance points to the irony of Vichy’s claims of

national defense and protection by pointing to the truth about the Vichy regime, setting their

lyrics to the collaborationist government’s own melody:

Ayant trahi la France Les hommes de Vichy Ont fait une alliance Avec nos ennemis Ils prèchent la défaite Et la résignation Mais ils paieront leur dette A toute la nation.73

Having betrayed France The men of Vichy made an alliance with our enemies They preach defeat and resignation But they will pay their debt to all the nation.

Indeed, not only do the Resistance songs blame Vichy for the German Occupation, but they

argue that France can only be saved without Vichy’s interference:

Jakes 25

Nous gars d’ la Résistance Qui n’avons pas peur de rien, Nous sauverons la France Sans ce triste Pétain.74

We, the men of the Resistance Who aren’t afraid of anything We will save France Without this sad Pétain

While these examples put forth compelling and explicit arguments about the hypocritical and

treasonous nature of the Vichy government, what is most interesting about the Resistance’s use

of parody is the way in which the songs deploy the same national tropes I described previously in

order to integrate the Resistance into the nation’s fold while excluding Vichy from the

nationhood. By setting discursive appeals to the nation’s history to the music of the Vichy

regime, the songs expose the discrepancy between Vichy’s self-aggrandizing optimism and the

hardship of everyday life. In so doing, they point out the falsity of Vichy’s claims to national

identity and assert that the Resistance fighters are the only true guardians of France.

Perhaps the best example of the rhetorical strategy of parody employed in the songs of

the Resistance is Les Voilà, Nos Soldats.75 The song opens with the same lines as the Vichy song,

but deviates from the original by the end of the first verse. While Maréchal, Nous Voilà begins

by describing Marshal Pétain as the subject who calls the people to action, Les Voilà, Nos

Soldats identifies France as the issuer of the call:

Maréchal, Nous Voilà! Les Voila, Nos Soldats A sacred flame A sacred flame Comes up from native soil Comes up from native soil And an exhilarated France And a bereaved France Salutes you, Marshal Comes back to life at its signal All your children who love you All of the Empire who loves France And venerate your years And calls themselves her child To your supreme call To her supreme call Responded: Present Responded: Present

By identifying France as the source of the call to action, the Resistance song transfers political

authority from Pétain and Vichy to a mythic French community. Marshal Pétain does not issue

26

the alarm, but France herself beckons her citizens to arms. While this shift may seem subtle, it

has three major implications for the Resistance movement. First, this shift takes away Pétain’s

right to lead and designates France herself as leader of the nation. Because the Resistance serves

an abstract France and not a concrete Pétain, its members need an indication of what France

would have them do. The only place to look for such guidance is within France’s own history.

Second, this shift distinguishes Vichy as separate from France. The Resistance song indicates

that serving France is not the same as serving Vichy. By separating the French government from

the idea of the nation itself, the Resistance song excludes Vichy from the national narrative.

Third, the shift transfers agency from the Vichy leaders to the French people. The original song

casts Pétain as the main agent in France’s fight and asserts that the people’s role is merely to

follow him. However, because the Resistance song identifies France as the issuer of the call to

action, the people are led by history’s example instead of a human agent. In the absence of a

human leader, the people must become agents in the fight against Germany. They cannot look to

a politician or a soldier to restore France to her sovereign state, but must take individual action in

order to overcome the enemy.

Having identified France as the source of the people’s call to action, the song then

constructs an idealized vision of the nation. In the refrain, the song evokes a narrative of France

that features the nation’s most revered military heroes:

Jeanne d’Arc, les voilà, Nos soldats, les sauveurs de la France. Les voilà, nos soldats. Ceux de Clovis, de Turenne et de Foch. A nouveau de l’ennemi, Ils ont refoulé la fureur boche Debout, la France est là, Et la gloire couronne ses soldats.

Joan of Arc, here they are Our soldiers, the saviors of France. Here they are, our soldiers The ones of Clovis, of Turenne and of Foch. Once again from the enemy They drove back German fury, Standing tall, France is here, And glory crowns her soldiers.

27

This refrain names Joan of Arc, the young martyr who returned the area of Orléans to France in

the fifteenth century; Clovis, the king who united the Frankish tribes in 481 CE; Turenne, the

general who saved Alsace from German annexation in 1675; and Foch, the French general who

planned the final offensive against Germany in WWI as the main figures in the narrative of

France’s glorious past. Taken together, these soldiers represent France’s most celebrated military

conquests. While the original song identifies Pétain as the “savior of France,” this new refrain

undermines his credibility and authority by ascribing French heroism to other figures. In other

words, the Resistance song denies Pétain’s hero status by omitting his name from the list of

France’s true heroes. Not only does this omission challenge the sincerity of Pétain’s intentions

and strength of his abilities, it also serves to separate him from the national community that

makes up France’s past.

While the refrain excludes Pétain from the national community, it includes the Resistance

fighters as members of this transhistorical group. After all, the Resistance fighters are the

“soldiers of Clovis, of Turenne, and of Foch.” By representing members of the Resistance as the

descendants of a lineage of French heroes, the song fully integrates Resistance fighters into the

national narrative. Constructed as true French citizens, the Resistance fighters then secure

ultimate political and moral authority. They may disobey Vichy’s laws, sabotage German

operations, harbor Jews, etc. because they are members of France’s national community. Thus,

national identity legitimizes their vigilante approach, transforming a group of rebels into a band

of national heroes.

By setting these lyrics to Vichy’s own melody, the Resistance song exposes the absurdity

of Vichy’s call and demonstrates that such a glorious military march is only appropriate for

France’s true soldiers, the Resistance fighters. Only when the melody is used to call citizens to

28

oppose German occupiers can its confident, militant sound be genuine. While Resistance singers

obviously could not replicate the elaborate and dramatic sound of the original song in their

camps, they still associated the military pomp and fanfare of Maréchal, Nous Voilà with their

version of the song. By mimicking the original melody, the Resistance song denies Vichy’s

claim to military honor and transfers such honor to the Resistance fight. Indeed, such a grandiose

sound proves quite appropriate for the heroic band of French heroes that the Resistance fighters

join.

Conclusion

I have argued that the songs of the French Resistance played a vital role in the

legitimization of the movement. Suffering from a lack of broad public support and targeted for

denunciation in an aggressive propaganda campaign waged by Vichy to mollify Germany, the

Resistance remained unpopular until the liberation in the summer of 1944. Yet, Resistance

fighters challenged Vichy’s negative representations through the performance of songs. By

reprising a performative tradition of political singing rooted in republican patriotism, Resistance

fighters mobilized a beloved form of popular culture to define themselves as genuinely French.

Through the singing of the songs, they aligned themselves with a transhistorical community of

patriotic French citizens, using discursive and musical tropes to delineate the boundaries of

membership. The songs of the Resistance complemented the use of national narratives with

parody to subvert Vichy’s political authority. While the government’s propaganda aimed to

persuade citizens that no one was more French that Philippe Pétain, the Resistance used songs in

order to demonstrate Vichy’s betrayal of the French people and to cast collaborators outside the

29

nation’s fold. Setting their own national appeals to Vichy’s melodies, they illustrated the

ludicrousness of Vichy’s alleged patriotism and asserted themselves as the only true French.

In this way, the performance of folk songs allowed resisters to remain squarely within France’s

revered republican tradition while excluding Vichy and its supporters from the nation.

Beyond the particular case of the songs of the French Resistance, this study shows the

ways in which music opens new resources for the construction of national identity. As rhetoric

and music scholars have demonstrated, rhythmic patterns and melodic phrases are symbol

systems that have long provided people with a means of understanding, constituting, and

representing their nations. Music, like language, is a symbol system that is “kept afloat only

because communities of people invest in [it], agree collectively that [its] signs serve as valid

currency.”76 I have suggested that one way to understand the meaning invested in French

Resistance singing is to look at the performative traditions from which the practice emerged. As

a historically situated performative practice, Resistance singing drew upon an existing tradition

of French political singing whereby citizens articulated themselves as members of the nation.

During the nation’s most politically contentious times, people depended upon singing as a tool

for the construction of collective identity, using songs to argue not only for their political

inclusion and preferred policies, but for a particular vision of the nation and their relationship to

it. Singing—a participatory, de-centralized activity—developed as an expression of the

republican values the French nation espoused. This legacy of political singing provided resisters

with a performative tradition from which to build their discourse.

This study also emphasizes the importance of music and singing in the construction of

national identity during times of war. As the lyricist Maurice Druon astutely observed, World

War II was not “the first time in history that a song served as a moral weapon. Since the dawn of

30

time, all armies—both national and revolutionary—have sung.”77 An ephemeral mode of

communication particularly well-suited to the material constraints of war, singing offers soldiers

and civilians alike the opportunity to constitute themselves as members of the national

community. Freed from the centralized hierarchy of spoken discourse and capable of

transforming emotions into symbolic form, songs are participatory performative events through

which singers contribute to the construction of national identity while deriving unique

interpretations of it. Songs and their performance, therefore, offer the critic invaluable insight

into the ways in which the boundaries of national belonging become demarcated and invite her to

consider the implications of those lines of membership and exclusion. Future criticism of the

rhetoric of wartime songs and singing, therefore, might ask who is excluded from the nation, by

what means, and at what expense to the well-being of the people. This scholarship must

undertake a complex and interdisciplinary methodological approach by which it can account for

the ways in which lyrics, music, and performance of songs work to constitute one group while

barring another. While we may be tempted to excuse symbolic exclusion in seemingly just and

necessary wars, we must remember that even this violence has material consequences. After all,

when Allied forces and Resistance fighters liberated France, Vichy government officials were

not the only ones who faced retribution. As the violent and publicly humiliating rituals

committed against the alleged collaboratrices remind us, righteous ends are often achieved

through troublesome means. In a contemporary world beset with conflict, we would do well to

take account of how songs and their performance create the symbolic opportunity for

constitution and exclusion alike.

31

Notes 1 According to historian Raymond Josse, between 3,000 and 10,000 students were involved in the protest. The exact number of participants is unknown, as many ran away to avoid arrest and left no record of their activities. Also, it is difficult to separate the protesters from the onlookers who came to watch the protest or happened to be on the Champs Elysées that day. See Raymond Josse, “La Naissance de la Résistance Étudiante à Paris: Et la Manifestation du 11 Novembre 1940,” Revue d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, no. 47 (Juillet 1962): 22. 2 Josse, “La Naissance de la Résistance Étudiante,” 17. Josse notes that the protest was patriotic in nature, rather than political. 3 For more on the politics of La Marseillaise, see Nathalie Dompnier, “Entre La Marseillaise et Maréchal, nous Voilà! Quel Hymne pour le régime de Vichy?” in Myriam Chimènes, La Vie Musicale sous Vichy (Bruxelles: Complexe, 2001), 69-89. While La Marseillaise was banned in the Occupied zone, it was allowed in the Unoccupied Zone, controlled until 1942 by the Vichy government. 4 All information about the November 11, 1940 protest was taken from Josse, “La Naissance de la Résistance Étudiante,” 1-31. 5 Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Box BA 2361, Paris France. 8 Occasional access to printing presses meant that some songs could be distributed on paper. In Ardèche, WWI veteran Achille Coevet gave copies of his song to Resistance trucks that carried it to another Resistance group in Les Vans. (See Sylvain Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant (Paris: Editions Autrement, 2004), 211.) So great was the fear of arrest, however, that most people did not keep written copies of the songs. Jean Melamed, for example, was arrested in Paris on August, 25, 1941, when authorities found subversive songs in his apartment. 9 Jean Maurin, Chansons et Poésies de la Résistance, as collection of songs and poems from the French Resistance, Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, ARC 074-72, Paris, France. Maurin’s manuscript provides the lyrics and melodies of nearly thirty songs. Half were written by members of the maquis and half were created and broadcast by the BBC. In addition, my archival research also uncovered two Resistance songs, “Chanson du maquis vasio,” and “La Ballade des Pendus.” These songsheets were mixed in with other WWII pamphlets and indicate the presence of other songs still undiscovered in France’s archives. 10 Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant; T. Barthoulot et al., eds. Paroles et Musique: Les Chansons et la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale (Besançon: Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation, 2003). These anthologies contain the words and sometimes music of Resistance songs, but offer no analysis of their rhetorical function. 11 For example, Jeanne Lerouge, a nurse in the Dordogne region, remembers hearing a song she wrote for a local group sung by soldiers from several neighboring regions. She was “surprised to hear it whistled or hummed . . . in other places and by men that [she] didn’t know,” a testament

32

to the fact that “the song was a bit widespread” despite the fact that it had not been printed. Lerouge’s quotation comes from Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 246. 12 I borrow this word from Dwight Conquergood, “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research,” The Drama Review 46, no. 2 (2002): 151-152. 13 James R. Irvine and Walter G. Kirkpatrick, “The Musical Form in Rhetorical Exchange: Theoretical Considerations” Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (1972): 272-284; Alberto Gonzalez and John J. Makay, “Rhetorical Ascription and the Gospel According to Dylan” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 1-14, Irving J. Rein and Craig M. Springer, “Where’s the Music? The Problems of Lyric Analysis” Critical Studies in Media Communication 3 (1986): 252-257; Deanna Sellnow and Timothy Sellnow, “’The Illusion of Life” Rhetorical Perspective: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Music of Communication” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (2001): 395-415. 14 Joshua Gunn, “Mourning Speech: Haunting and the Spectral Voices of Nine-Eleven,” Text and Performance Quarterly 24: 2 (April 2004): 92. 15 Greg Goodale, Sonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 3. 16 Conquergood, “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research,” 151-152. 17 Kent Ono and John Sloop, “The Critic of Vernacular Discourse,” Communication Monographs 62 (1995): 19-46. 18 On June 22, 1940, the French signed the armistice with Germany at the same forest in Compiègne where Germany had surrendered in 1918. The agreement granted Germany control over three-fifths of French territory, a space that included the most heavily populated and richest portions of metropolitan France. The rest of the country, the more sparsely populated and poorer regions of central and southern France, would be controlled by Vichy. Although the conditions of the armistice were quite harsh, Vichy lauded the agreement as a safeguard against the full brunt of German regression. Believing that Germany would win the war, Vichy held that a policy of collaboration was the best way to protect France’s overseas possessions and domestic interests during the occupation and to ensure France’s place of prominence in Hitler’s Europe after the war ended. 19 Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 149. 20 Philippe Pétain, quoted in Philippe Burrin, France Under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise, trans., Janet Lloyd. (New York: The New Press, 1993), 6-7; H.R. Kedward, Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance, 1940-1944 (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1985), 1-3.

33

21 H.R. Kedward, “Patriots and Patriotism in Vichy France,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 32 (1982): 176. 22 Sweets, The Politics of Resistance in France, 6-7. 23 The Vichy government’s claims to “Frenchness” can perhaps best be seen in their propaganda which sought to present Philippe Pétain as an exemplary patriot and guardian of French identity. For examples of this propaganda, see La Propagande Sous Vichy: 1940-1944 (Paris: BDIC, 1990). 24 Burrin, France Under the Germans, 185. 25 Burrin, France Under the Germans, 188. 26 H.R. Kedward, Resistance in Vichy France: A Study of Ideas and Motivation in the Southern Zone, 1940-1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 233. 27 R. Austin, “The Cult of the Outlaw,” in Vichy France and the Resistance: Culture and Ideology, eds. Roger Austin and H.R. Kedward (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985), 240-5. 28 Austin, “The Cult of the Outlaw,” 242. 29 Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 119. 30 John MacAloon, quoted in Marvin Carlson, Performance: A Critical Introduction (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 20. 31 While this study is concerned with the ways in which historical modes of action influenced WWII singing in France, James Jasinski’s has theorized the ways in which preexisting speech acts offer inventional resources for current rhetorical action. See, e.g., James Jasinski, “Instrumentalism, Contextualism, and Interpretation in Rhetorical Criticism,” in Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, eds. Alan G. Gross and William M. Keith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 195-223. 32 Richard Bauman, Story, Performance, and Event (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3. 33 Bauman, Story, Performance, and Event, 4. 34 Carlson, Performance, 5. In this passage, Carlson is referring to Richard Bauman’s definition of performance that appeared in the International Encyclopedia of Communications. 35 Laura Mason, Singing the French Revolution: Popular Culture and Politics, 1787-1799 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), 2.

34

36 Mason, Singing the French Revolution, 7-11. 37 Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870- 1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), 441. 38 Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 442. 39 Regina M. Sweeney, Singing our Way to Victory: French Cultural Politics and Music during the Great War (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 12-3. 40 Alban Vistel, Héritage Sprirtuel de la Résistance (Lyon: Éditions Lug, 1955), 63, 81, quoted in Sweets, The Politics of Resistance in France, 11. 41 Copy of Saliège’s letter, reproduced in Ville de Toulouse Bulletin Municipal (Numéro spécial consacré à la liberation de Toulouse, October 1944 [Marseille: Imprimerie Gaussel & Cie]), 28, quoted in Sweets, The Politics of Resistance in France, 11. 42 Ville de Toulouse Bulletin Municipal, 12, quoted in Sweets, The Politics of Resistance in France, 12. 43 Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Box BA 2105, Paris, France. 44 Ibid. 45 Roger Tabar, quoted in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 158. 46 Raskin, “‘Le Chant des Partisans,’” 68. 47 Raskin, “‘Le Chant des Partisans,’” 76. 48 Composer Anna Marly quoted in Raskin, “‘Le Chant des Partisans,’” 69. 49 Michael McGee, “In Search of ‘The People’: A Rhetorical Alternative,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 61, no. 3 (October 1975): 249; Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 73, no. 2 (May 1987): 140-1; Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Deeds Done in Words: Presidential Rhetoric and the Genres of Governance (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 55. 50 James R. Irvine and Walter G. Kirkpatrick, “The Musical Form in Rhetorical Exchange: Theoretical Considerations” Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (1972): 279. 51 Alberto Gonzalez and John J. Makay, “Rhetorical Ascription and the Gospel According to Dylan” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (Feb. 1983): 4.

35

52 Deanna Sellnow and Timothy Sellnow, “’The Illusion of Life” Rhetorical Perspective: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Music of Communication” Critical Studies Media Communication 18 (Dec. 2001): 397. 53 “Les Chant des Partisans,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 113. 54 “Pas de Kollaboration,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 96. 55 “Liberté,” Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 191. 56 “Pas de Kollaboration,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 96. 57 “Francs-Tireurs Partisans de France,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 131. 58 “Les Fifis,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 128. 59 “Francs-Tireurs Partisans de France,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 131 60 “Chant des Maquisards Chauvinois,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 259. 61 “La Marche du Maquis,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 197. 62 “Le Chant des Maquis Ardéchois,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 208. 63 “Le Chant héroïque de la Resistance,” in Sylvain Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 200. 64 “Les Chant des Partisans,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 113. 65 “La Marseillaise du Maquis,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 238. 66 For more information about the history and uses of these songs, see the indexes of Sweeney, Singing our Way to Victory and Mason, Singing the French Revolution. 67 This anecdote was taken from François Musard’s testimony in Patrick Valérin, Chansons et Chanteurs des Années Noirs: Une Approche de l’Histoire au Travers de la Chanson et de ses Serviteurs (Malemort: Proanima, 1996), 192-93. 68 Julien Helfgott, quoted in Valérin, Chansons et Chanteurs des Années Noirs, 193. 69 Hutcheon A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (New York and London: Methuen, 1986), 6-7. 70 Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody, 32.

36

71 Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), 55, quoted in Gray, Watching with the Simpsons, 4. 72 “Maréchal, Nous Voila!” in Barthoulot, Paroles et Musique, 62-3. 73 “Marechal et Laval,” in Maurin, Chansons et Poésies de la Résistance. 74 “L’Espoir des gars du Maquis,” in Chimello, La Resistance en Chantant, 282. 75 “Les Voila, Nos Soldats” in Barthoulot, Paroles et Musique, 81. 76 Susan McClary, Feminine Endings (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 21. 77 Maurice Druon, quoted in Raskin, “‘Le Chant des Partisans,’” 75.